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Class Supplement: 早稲田ＡＯ Extra Questionshttps://noriyatti.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/class-supplement-%e6%97%a9%e7%a8%b2%e7%94%b0%ef%bd%81%ef%bd%8f%e3%80%80extra-questions/
Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:43:48 +0000http://noriyatti.wordpress.com/?p=5087]]>This map is taken from a website entitled World Map of Railways. Take a look at it and answer the following questions.

1. Focusing on Africa and India, write a paragraph explaining what you can learn from this map concerning development.

2. Discuss what aspects other than infrastructure are necessary to fight poverty.

Answer Keys
Excerpts from Common Wealth Economics for Crowded Planet, Jeffrey D. Sachs
pp.227-228
Unlike the Eurasian landmass, sub-Saharan Africa is inherently isolated by the Sahara and by the lack of rivers navigable from the ocean to the interior. Moreover, the colonial powers did not build much infrastructure in the interior of Africa. In India, the British raj constructed a thorough rail network often connected to rural roads, in part to bring India’s rural cotton production to British factories. In Africa, by contrast, rails were not built to reach villages but rather a few diamond and gold mines. The result was not a rail network but some disconnected rail capillaries that reached only a tiny proportion of Africa’s rural population.

pp. 229-231
The poor know what to do but are too poor to do it. Since they can’t meet their immediate needs (food, safe water, health care) they also can’t afford to save and invest for the future. That is where foreign assistance comes in. A temporary boost of aid over the course of several years, if properly invested, can lead to a permanent rise in productivity. That boost, in turn, leads to self-sustaining growth. The logical chain is the following:
Temporary aid→Boost of productivity→Rise of saving and investment→Sustained growth

The escape from extreme poverty requires four basic types of investment. The first is a boost to productivity of the core livelihood, agriculture. This is the hallowed Green Revolution that initially lifts smallholder farmers out of subsistence. The second is health, including control of the main killers－infection, nutritional deficiencies, and unsafe childbirth－through the provision of preventative and curative health services. The third is education, which ensures that households develop the requisite skills to navigate the local global economy. The fourth is infrastructure, essential for productivity in every sphere, including power, roads, safe water for drinking and sanitation, phone and Internet connectivity, and port services. The boost of farm production has very often been the deus ex machina that triggers the long term growth process. It is also a process that often starts with outside help, as when the United States funded the initial research and many of the inputs (improved seeds and fertilizer) that went into India’s Green Revolution, which began in the second half of the 1960s. In the urban areas, the initial investment will not support agriculture but rather manufacturing or services. Perhaps the trigger to growth will be improved roads that facilitate trade or an improved port that permits the start of an apparel sector or a power plant that provides vital power for factory production. Whatever the particular investment, the concept is the same: raise productivity above subsistence in order to trigger a self-sustaining process of economic growth.

1. Focusing on Africa and India, write a paragraph explaining what you can learn from this map concerning development.

I can learn from this map that whether a country has its infrastructure in place or not can be related to its development. Africa, the world’s poorest continent, has few railway networks except in South Africa and countries up in the north, while India, which is now regarded as an emerging economy, has railways which are as closely woven as those in many developed nations such America and Spain. This contrast between these two countries which share the same kind of history mainly of colonization, independence after WWII, and epidemic-like poverty which followed after the independence tells that the existence of railways can be a factor that have decided the fortune of them. When India put its foot in the door of development with the development of IT industry and globalization, it had an established system of transportation the British had left which was ready to accommodate the needs to move materials and people quickly and in large amounts, and we know the rest of the story. Africa, on the other hand, has almost no facilities to provide necessities such as food, medicine, and materials, which hampers the efforts for development.

2. Discuss what aspects other than infrastructure are necessary to fight poverty.

The key to successful fight against poverty is to assist the poor out of the vicious cycle of subsistence by making them able to support themselves and develop their community by themselves. To help start their self-sustaining growth, developed countries can assist them in three areas other than helping build their infrastructure.
1) assistance in agriculture:
to help them out of food shortage through provision of technology and skills
2) assistance in health care:
to help them eliminate preventable deaths but providing basic healthcare which most developed countries enjoy in a way almost as equal as fundamental human rights
3) assistance in education:
to help their children receive proper education so that they can contribute to the community especially in its economic development in the future

]]>noriyattiClass Supplements, TOEFL iBT, Independent Essay Writing, Money for military or other purposes, The country I would like to visit on a two-week trip, Is it ok for teachers to express their political belief in class?https://noriyatti.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/class-supplements-toefl-ibt-independent-essay-writing-money-for-military-or-other-purposes-the-country-i-would-like-to-visit-on-a-two-week-trip-is-it-ok-for-teachers-to-express-their-political-be/
Tue, 07 Aug 2012 02:15:06 +0000http://noriyatti.wordpress.com/?p=5085]]>☆Writing Topic A: Some people think it is important for a country to maintain a strong army in case of war. Others think it is better for a country to spend money and energy on other things than the military. Do you feel that your country should have a strong army?

Hints for points
Yes:
neighboring countries (China, South Korea, and ASEAN countries) getting wealthier and spending more money on their military
America getting less wealthy
The threat of North Korea

No:
less chance of war than before (strong economic and political relationships with America, China and other countries)
doubt about solution of international conflicts by military power (Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, “war on terror”)
Article Nine as a soft power
the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty (American military bases in Japan)
other priorities (global warming, sagging economy, aging society, need for more research and development of science and technology)

☆Writing Topic B: In your school schedule, you are required to take an extra class in one of the following subjects: 1) physical education (sports and exercise activities), 2) home economics (cooking or sewing), or 3) current events (the study of topics from recent news stories). Which one of the three subjects would you choose to study?

Hints for points
Physical Education: keep in good shape, opportunities to try unfamiliar sports, refreshment, make friends
Home Economics: independence, to understand the world at the level of household (the basic unit of society)
Current Events: to understand what is going on in the world
related to many important aspects of our society such as economy, politics, and history
area that TV reports do not constantly cover in detail (especially international affairs)

☆Extra Writing Topic: School teachers, whether they work for public or private schools, should not express their opinions on current politics.

Hints for points
Yes:
1. In practice, contracts between teachers and the schools they work for prohibit them from taking a stand in politics, and teachers should follow the agreement they made when hired.

2. Teachers should be the conveyers of the consensus of the public. They should inform students of a variety of, well-balanced views, not a slanted, personal view.

3. Having a radical political view is a stepping stone in any place, including universities, on this world. Therefore, it is unthinkable and unacceptable for teachers, who are responsible for their students future careers, to affect their students’ political views.

No:
1. As long as they clearly say to their students that what they say is only a private view, it is ok.

2. Except for young children, who are still vulnerable to brainwash, students know better than to believe everything their teachers tell them. They take their teachers’ opinions as one of the many.

3. There is no neutral view, and, if any, such sterilized statements as those found in textbooks approved by the government would be the worst teaching materials in class, where a human beings of two different generations struggle to make the most of the given time for the better future, which requires realistic understanding of the past and the present.

解答アイディア：
Although it seems impossible to abolish death penalty when most Japanese feel it is necessary, Japan should abolish it for the following reasons.
1) Abolitionism is the trend of the world.
2) Death penalty is morally wrong. It is based on uncivilized thought: An eye for an eye.
Humans have no rights to kill other humans.
3) Death penalty is not practical. It does not work as deterrent. Most criminals are mentally ill and/or mentally disabled.
4) False charges should be stopped. Even DNA examinations are often wrong.
5) Life sentence should be the alternative for compensation for the crime and prevention of second offence.

Marked essays and sent them to the Shibuya branch at the fast food restaurant, got some documents from the ward office, tried to supplement sleep at the fast food restaurant but gave up, bought food, and got home around 17:30.

Prepared for classes that start next week at Ikebukuro, whose booking I was told last night through e-mail.

Had a lesson (16:00-17:20 ) at Chofu, got to my station a little before 19:00, bought food, visited a place where cats in the neighborhood gather and talked with a woman who was also visiting the place to see the cats. According to her, the cats are taken care of volunteering people and that those I had thought disappeared have been given necessary treatment and/or fostered and doing well. I needed not have worried about them. I am relived and was happy talking with her. Got home a little past 20:00.